Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III expressed concerns about the understanding reached between the P5+1 and Iran in Lausanne, Switzerland in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday. Baker wrote that there appeared to be “serious misunderstandings” between the negotiating parties on what a final agreement would look like. His major questions about the understanding with Iran are: the phasing of sanctions relief, the verification mechanism, the “snapback” re-imposition of sanctions, and Iran’s refusal to disclose information about its past work on its nuclear program, which is necessary for a robust verification regime. Baker urged Secretary of State John Kerry to convince the other P5+1 nations to support a non-negotiable stance on these outstanding questions.

The Iranian leadership’s position that all sanctions must be removed upon signing any final agreement “is a far cry from the U.S. understanding that sanctions will only be removed over time, as Iran meets its obligations…[I]f Iran holds to it, there should be no final agreement,” Baker wrote.

Baker becomes the third former Secretary of State to raise questions about the P5+1-Iran understanding. Henry Kissinger and George P. Shultz wrote an op-ed earlier this month in which they expressed skepticism about a one-year breakout period, arguing that the concept of keeping Iran at a one-year breakout was a weakening of the original P5+1 stance, which was to ensure that Iran was only permitted a capacity compatible with a civilian nuclear program. One of their major criticisms was a “broad-based asymmetry” in the understanding, “which provides Iran permanent relief from sanctions in exchange for temporary restraints on Iranian conduct.”

David Rothkopf, the CEO and Editor of The FP Group, which publishes Foreign Policy, raised the same question in a piece on Thursday. We are, he wrote, “renting [Iran’s] restraint”: rewarding them with significant sanctions relief, which he estimates at $420 billion in a 15-year agreement, for Iran to freeze its program. In comparison, he wrote, Iran’s “Syrian client state had a GDP of about $65 million in 2011 before the crisis there heated up and devastated the country. Its would-be client Yemen has a GDP of about $36 billion.” The sanctions relief would allow Iran to “extend its influence, buy weapons, and underwrite terrorist groups to an even greater extent than it has been doing throughout the period the country has felt the squeeze of sanctions.”

A meeting earlier this week between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the disclosure of Iran's past nuclear research and capabilities ended with no breakthrough, Reuters reported Thursday, contradicting the claim of Iran's ambassador to the IAEA that they had "found solutions" to the problems discussed.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said it had a "constructive exchange" with Iran this week but there was no sign of a breakthrough on aspects of its nuclear program that the agency says Tehran has failed to fully address. ...

The IAEA said in March it expected progress with Iran this month on outstanding issues related to the nature of neutron calculations and alleged experiments on explosives that could be used to develop an atomic device.

It said then it expected Iran to propose new measures to address other outstanding issues with the IAEA by mid-April.

According to Iran's official IRNA news agency, the topics discussed were neutron calculations and a large explosion in the city of Marivan. IRNA cited an Iranian official who claimed that the "questions raised by the agency [IAEA] about Tehran's nuclear program are based on allegations made by enemies of Iran."

Developers in search of a better way to translate apps into different languages started signing up for Lingui Instant App Localization Solution the moment it was introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March. Lingui is the latest service from Israel’s One Hour Translation, which has grown to be the world’s largest online translation agency since its founding in 2009. Launched by the Rehovot-based company’s subsidiary, OHT-Mobile, Lingui inserts a few lines of code to extract all text from an app. The administrator selects the target language and mode of translation (machine, professional human or crowdsourced) and when the translation is complete the update goes live instantly. No need to republish or update the app on the user’s device. “One of the biggest challenges facing developers is how to make their applications accessible and engaging for users around the world,” says CEO Ofer Shoshan, who offered the platform free to early adopters including Deutsche Telecom. Normally the SDK costs $100 per month. “Until now, any newly translated apps would have to be uploaded to the relevant app stores, delaying the time to get the app to market. What’s more, users often had to update the app in order to get support for new languages or updated translation. With Lingui, your app translations and supported languages are managed on OHT-Mobile’s cloud.” He says that many developers are surprised when their app proves popular in other countries. “Once they invest relatively little effort and money, they get a much wider audience for their app,” Shoshan tells ISRAEL21c. (via Israel21c)